With more than 4.5 million customers acquired since launching in February 2019, TymeBank is one of the world’s fastest-growing digital banks. Founded on simplicity, transparency and affordability, the country’s first digital bank focuses on making retail and business banking accessible and affordable to all South Africans across the economic spectrum.
A South African success story
Starting out in South Africa in 2012 as TYME, a fintech company focusing on domestic digital remittance services, TymeBank was granted a commercial banking licence in 2017, the first to be issued since 1999.
In 2018, Dr. Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC) Financial Services Holdings joined Tyme founders Coenraad Jonker and Tjaart van der Walt and management as a key shareholder, making TymeBank South Africa’s first majority black-owned bank.
TymeBank is a member of the Tyme Group of companies, which is currently headquartered in Singapore and builds high-tech high touch banks in fast-growing, emerging markets.
Unique high-tech high-touch model
TymeBank is the first bank in South Africa to operate fully off a secure cloud-based infrastructure network. The branchless bank’s hybrid model of digital banking and physical onboarding points makes sense in the South African market, where the levels of digital and financial literacy are low.
While it may not look and act like a traditional bank, TymeBank is fully regulated and held to the same standards of safety and security as all other banks in South Africa.
Through its partnership with trusted retailers Pick n Pay and Boxer, TymeBank takes advantage of the ubiquity of retail points to allow customers to sign up for accounts and obtain live debit cards in under five minutes without any paperwork. This is done via the in-store Tyme kiosks which the bank manufactures, and which are integral to its onboarding success.
The bank leverages its cloud-based technology to pass cost savings onto the consumer and enhance the customer experience, while the open-service architecture of TymeBank’s modern tech stack allows the bank to collaborate with third parties at a fast pace and minimal additional cost. It also allows for a continuously expanding product portfolio without compromising the efficiency and agility of the central stack or overburdening the balance sheet.
The differentiated customer experience provided by TymeBank’s hybrid distribution model, its radical transparency and value for money led to it being named Forbes Best Bank in South Africa a year and a half after launching.
With a competitive Net Promoter Score (NPS) when compared to legacy retail banks in South Africa and an above average NPS across low and middle-income brackets, the bank has maintained high levels of customer satisfaction as well as high levels of price and savings rate competitiveness throughout its growth trajectory.
Product Innovation
Despite an unfavourable economic climate and the restrictions caused by Covid-19, TymeBank’s agility and the construct of its architecture enabled the bank to adapt very quickly and bring new capabilities to the market.
Innovation is part of TymeBank’s DNA. The bank has continually expanded its offering since launching the EveryDay zero-monthly fee transactional account with features that include a money transfer service, a GoalSave tool that allows customers to open up to 10 savings pockets and earn market leading interest rates. Value-added services include the ability of customers to be paid their salaries a day early as well as off-balance sheet products such as insurance.
MoreTyme™, an interest-free buy now, pay later offering was officially launched in 2021, followed by the launch of the bank’s first credit card as well as an affordable medical insurance offering called TymeHealth in the first quarter of 2022.
Partnership model
Besides TymeBank’s well established partnerships with national retailers Pick n Pay and Boxer, the bank also counts Zion Christian Church, the largest church in South Africa, as a key partner.
In October 2021, TymeBank announced a strategic partnership with TFG (The Foschini Group), a leading fashion retailer with more than 26 million loyalty customers, to meet the evolving financial services needs of consumers in the TFG ecosystem. The partnership will see TymeBank diversifying its customer base into higher income segments while providing a viable pathway to responsible consumer lending.
International investors
In December 2021, TymeBank, together with its international arm Tyme, completed a US$ 180 million capital raise with investments from Tencent, a world-leading internet and technology company based in China, and CDC Group, the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor.
Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners LLP, and the Gokongwei’s JG Summit Holdings (JG Summit) came on board as investors via the first part of the raise in February 2021.
The capital will be used to grow TymeBank in South Africa and to fund GOTyme in the Philippines, where Tyme has secured a digital bank licence in partnership with the leading Filipino conglomerate, Gokongwei Group. GOTyme is based on the TymeBank model and is due to be launched in the latter half of 2022.
The ability to attract high calibre international investors represents a strong endorsement for TymeBank and is testament to the global competitiveness of Tyme’s value proposition and the quality of its management. It is also a vote of confidence in South Africa’s banking sector.
